Do I need to buy a ticket for every train ride?

What one card covers

A prepaid IC card works across almost every railway, subway and city bus in the country, including networks run by competing companies. You buy it once, keep topping it up, and stop thinking about fares.

It also works as money. Convenience stores, vending machines, coin lockers and a growing number of shops take the same tap, which is why residents treat it as a wallet rather than a ticket.

Tapping in and out

Touch the reader on the way in and again on the way out. The gate calculates the fare from the two taps and deducts it — you never work out a price yourself.

Forgetting to tap out is the one thing that causes trouble, because the system cannot close the journey. If a gate refuses to open, take the ticket to the staffed window at the end of the row rather than trying again.

When you still need a separate ticket

Bullet trains and limited express services are booked as seats, not tapped from your balance. You buy those at a ticket office or machine, and you may end up holding two tickets at once — one for the base fare, one for the seat.

A handful of private lines and rural buses sit outside the shared network. They are the exception, and they will say so at the gate.

Topping up

Machines in every station take cash and add it to the card in seconds. Most have an English button, and the flow is the same everywhere.

Cards can also live on a phone instead of in your pocket, topped up from the phone itself. That removes the one real annoyance of the physical card, which is that it can only be reloaded with cash.

Good to know

• The card can be added to an iPhone or Android phone instead of carrying plastic
• Bullet train seats are booked separately, not tapped from the balance
• A card bought in one city works in the others — the networks accept each other

Sources: JNTO · Tokyo Metro · Updated Jul 2026